We recently conducted an independent survey of Facebook users assessing their attitudes toward ads on the site. We’re sharing an early preview of the results here.

First, a few demographic notes on our respondents. 73.9% of respondents said they use Facebook multiple times a day, and so make up part of the most active segment of the site’s userbase. 53.7% of our respondents were male, and 46.3% were female. 87.8% were between the ages of 13-25 and while 12.2% were over 25.

What do you think of Facebook ads?

Most people are hesitant to proclaim their love of advertising, but what’s notable here is that over half of all respondents are ok with ads on Facebook. 53.5% responded that they felt “neutral” and “didn’t mind” the ads they saw while visiting the site.

What type of ads do you like least?

Nonetheless, note that 40.3% of respondents did answer that they ‘disliked’ ads on Facebook. A subsequent question asked them which ad type they liked least. User-reported results indicate that ads for destinations within Facebook are preferred to ads where a click takes the user elsewhere. 62.7% of surveyed users said that ads to visit other websites, outside of Facebook, were their least favored ad type.

What type of advertised products do you like least?

For this survey, we distinguished between the type of ads and the types of products they promote. We grouped advertised products into five categories: games, movies or tv shows, foods or beverages, dating sites and education programs or job sites. Of these categories, dating sites were least popular. 46% of respondents answered that dating sites were their least favorite type of advertised product. Next were education programs and jobs, followed in a distant third place by games. Movies, tv shows, foods and beverages were rated as the least offensive product types.

Survey results also addressed these follow-up questions:

What type of ads do you like best? What type of advertised products do you like best? What type of ads do you click on most? How often do you click on an ad because your friend liked it? What improvements would make you like ads more?

While you can’t necessarily change the product you’re advertising, there are some ways to improve how users perceive your ads.

For example, users indicated preference for some ad types over others, so it may be possible to adjust the ad type you’re using for a better outcome. Our full survey results show some promising takeaways on users’ most preferred ad types and advertised product types.

Keep in mind that these are user-reported responses, and so reflect users’ self-perceived attitudes toward ads, not necessarily their actions. However, these qualitative results can serve as a useful overlay to the ad performance data available through the Facebook Insights dashboard.

The full results of this survey, as well as extensive demographic data for Facebook’s audiences around the world, is only available to members of Inside Facebook Gold, our data membership service. To learn more or join, please see gold.insidenetwork.com/facebook